DEFENCE
The battlefield advantages of switching to electric Electric initiatives have become increasingly topical in civilian life with the proliferation of smart home energy, electric cars and clean public transport. Few of these initiatives have so far carried over into the battlefield but, as IFS’ Jeff Pike explains, they hold potential benefits. When walking the floor at DSEI 2019 this year, I was struck by the volume of conversation around battlefield electrification—perhaps not unexpected with environmental factors one of the dominating news items of 2019. When the topic is first mentioned it perhaps conjures unrealistic visions of fully electrified ships, tanks and aircraft, built as now but without combustion engines, operating in combat environments. But the same challenges of civil electrification of vehicles apply in terms of limited range, cost, weight and the fact battery technology has been slow in its evolution and hasn’t kept up with aspirations. So, we are probably at least ten years or more away from this eventuality. The more realisable and often overlooked near benefit of electrification comes with the strategic change to battlefield support assets and unmanned vehicles, coupled with a focus on logistics support and the military supply chain.
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Fossil fuel challenge Military conflicts are becoming increasingly reliant on logistics to underpin the huge undertakings of maintenance and shipping personnel, equipment and supporting resources to often remote, difficult to reach locations and then trying to sustain them. An effective logistics strategy can be the difference between the success and failure of an entire military campaign and fossil fuels play a key role here—the US DoD, for example, is the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world. For every tank there are three tankers chasing it. The US Army can use as much as 600,000 gallons of fuel a day to run an armoured division. For context, in the Afghanistan war, Pentagon officials told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel cost the military about $400 by the time it arrived in the remote locations where U.S. troops were operating.
All this ‘logistics’ comes with challenges. Look at the successful modern conflicts of recent times—all the victorious sides had air superiority. Gaining this superiority comes at a cost—air bases require a huge logistics footprint which opens up attack vulnerabilities. But, without air superiority the logistics footprint is a massive vulnerability. Consider fuel alone. Simply transporting fossil fuel to the forward operating base requires a huge convoy of military vehicles. Moreover, fuel stored in remote bases is housed in vast flexi-tanks, difficult to hide and incredibly vulnerable to aerial attack. Then the convoy and broader logistics support machine itself needs security, feeding, accommodation and support, thus perpetuating the need for more personnel who, in turn, need supporting themselves. All this comes at a human cost. US Army Environmental Policy Institute figures indicate the casualty factor for fuel resupplies in Afghanistan was 0.042, which is 0.042 casualties for every fuel-related resupply convoy—or almost one casualty for every 24 fuel resupply convoys. When you consider the number of U.S.-only fuel convoys required in Iraq in FY2007 was 5,133, the casualty count is quite alarming. Reducing the logistics footprint Switching to electric could deliver strategic battlefield advantages— limiting maintenance overhead and more importantly offering a direct benefit to saving lives. QinetiQ, a global organisation of scientists and engineers at the forefront of research and commentary on the use Line of Defence
